


Case 76: The Adventure Of The Mummy's Curse (1888)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [99]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Ancient Egypt, Curses, Destiel - Freeform, Disguise, Fear, Gay Sex, Happy Ending, Inheritance, Johnlock - Freeform, London, M/M, Museums, Omens & Portents, Pie, Police, Prostitution, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 05:45:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16848280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: ֍ A near-death experience is not a good way to spend St. Valentine's Day so things can only improve from there – can't they?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyster99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyster99/gifts).



> TW: Non-graphic mention of failed suicide attempt at start of story.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

John Dean Watson, as I have so often observed, did not do Feelings. And he reserved a special loathing for that horribly commercialized flowers-and-chocolates-selling opportunity known as St. Valentine's Day which darkened the calendar with its baleful presence only a few days after our solving of the Duke Boys' Case. I had expected him to pass that Tuesday working in his surgery and then coming home to a regular meal followed by some reading and/or writing, and then bed. 

Instead of which he was in the next room to where I was now sat, fighting to save a man's life. A man we both knew.

My friend chose that moment to emerge through the door looking utterly exhausted. The young fellow sat across from me bit back a sob.

“Please Lord no!”

“He is safe”, John said calmly, despite looking wrecked. “I have administered a sedative and he will be under in minutes; rest is what his body needs more than anything else. You should be with him now.”

Constable Chatton Smith let out an almost inhuman cry and staggered through the open door, only narrowly missing John. We heard a strangled 'Fray!' before there was the sound of sobbing. I led John away to the main room where we could leave them in peace.

֍

We were downstairs for some little time before Constable Smith rejoined us, his haggard face making him look so much more than his nineteen tender years. Neither John nor I commented on the fact that he had very clearly been crying. 

“Thank the Lord for that woman!” he sighed, collapsing into a chair.

“Mrs. Macdonald?” I asked surprised. Essie Macdonald, the late wife of poor Inspector Fraser Macdonald lying a broken man upstairs, had died last year and I have to say had been little mourned. A most unpleasant woman who had openly brought her lovers to the family home in her last few years, I had met her but once and that had been once too often. The Fates had gotten it right for once when she had caught something from one of those lovers and died soon after.

Constable Smith shook his head.

“No”, he said. “I was working today but I got an urgent telegram from Alex up in Warwickshire. A woman had called in at his station and told him that his uncle's life was in danger.”

I thought back to the genial Warwickshire constable, the inspector's nephew whom we had met last year shortly after his aunt's death (The Adventure of the Jew Pedlar). I had treated John to a week in Stratford after the case because of my poor treatment of him in the weeks prior. It seemed like a lifetime ago yet.... ye Gods, it had been only eight months back!

“A lady who lives near Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire”, Constable Smith said. “She said that his uncle needed help immediately or it would be too late. Alex is one of the most unimaginative men on the planet bless him, but even he was scared. He sent me a telegram and I rushed back to Fray's house immediately.”

“Did this woman have a name?” I asked.

“Mrs. Cynric Musgrave”, he said. “Wasn't there a Musgrave in one of your books, doctor?”

John and I exchanged glances. Mrs. Cynric Musgrave, née Miss Pamela Barnes, had correctly foretold the deaths of the villains in our Scottish case and had been proven right on certain other things too. The memory still made me feel ashamed even if I had had little choice in the matter of my three-year absence from his life. 

“I found him lying in all that blood!” Constable Smith shuddered. “It was... it was....”

He put his head in his hands and sobbed. It was heart-wrenching.

“He will make a full recovery”, John said quietly. “Physically at least. I am not sure about his mental state, though.”

“I have contacts who can obtain him time off work”, I said firmly. “We need to give him space to recover. And us a chance to work out what caused this.”

The young man across from us continued to sob but I noticed a slight break in his sorrows. He knew something and it was a question of finding out what. Not from him in his current state of course; I would have to go elsewhere.

֍

“The personage you are after is a Mr. Robert Gordon”, Miss Bradbury said.

It was but one day later. She was worryingly good at times.

“Who is he?” John asked.

“He is a curator at the British Museum”, she said. “And someone with one of the most slappable faces in London Town!”

She took a deep breath.

“Mr. Constantine Graham was a rich Scotsman whose wife bore him seven children, the last four of whom died young”, she said. “That left him with a son Constantine and two utterly horrible daughters Agnes and Essie. Mr. Graham was a business associate of Inspector Macdonald's father John, presumably on the grounds that like human excrescences attract each other.

"Mr. Graham took no interest in his daughters and arranged for his son to marry Miss Ruth Scotland, the daughter of the rich Countess of Alexandria. The boy hated her on sight and apparently committed suicide when he realized he would be forced into the marriage......”

"Apparently?" I queried.

"It was before my time but I mater came across evidence that suggested he may have fled the country", she explained. "It says something that Mr. Graham was prepared to accept the not insignificant stigma still attached to suicide, always assuming that it was a cover-up. It certainly changed his plans for his daughters, and they were betrothed to the Inspector and his elder brother Andrew. The latter however had plans of his own and fled to Warwickshire where he married and quickly put his true love in the family way, hence Constable Alexander Macdonald whom you met one time. That in turn meant that the poor Inspector was compelled to marry Essie Graham, the sentence being a minimum twenty years hard labour."

She really was most disrespectful at times.

“Mr. Graham was quite rich and when he died his whole estate devolved on his two daughters. Agnes married her first cousin Mr. Charles Gordon who would have inherited after the daughters. However - and this is the critical bit - the two Gordon daughters' inheritances were what they call a capital shift so that if either died then their widower got ten per cent of their inheritance as a lump sum for each year they outlived them and the rest at the end of that time. But if their widower died during that time, the surviving sister or their heirs if they had any got the lot. Agnes and her husband had one son, the ghastly Robert, and they both died last year. That meant that financially speaking it was in Robert's interests that his Uncle Fraser follow his mother out of this world as soon as possible, especially as the young idiot is as financially irresponsible as he is downright annoying.”

“The one with the slappable face”, I smiled. She rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“And one of the biggest bores in the city!” she said firmly. “And there is plenty of competition for that title, I can tell you! I went to the Museum's exhibition on Ancient Greece some time back. _He utterly ruined it!_ He insisted on going up to anyone he could find and droning on about all the most boring bits of history imaginable! And his _voice!_ How can anyone manage a monotone drawl for that long without drawing breath?”

“He does not approve of Constable Smith?” I guessed. She nodded.

“I always think our society works so well because we have a good balance”, she said. “People have high morals because they have to have something to aim for, and most people are tolerant of those who maybe fall a bit short but live their own lives quietly, so long as it doesn't bother them and they don't march around shouting about it. There are a few who do of course but people tend to either ignore or make fun of them. Fortunately few of them are as spiteful as the Rambling Robbie. He has been round to see the inspector on more than one occasion; of course he found out about Constable Smith soon enough and has been using that as leverage. The inspector was having enough trouble with his shrew of a wife dying and his feelings for the new person in his life, and I would guess that he was pushed that one step too far. Humans are fragile things at the end of the day as I know more than most.”

“This Mr. Gordon has got to be stopped”, I said firmly. “You said that he works at the British Museum?”

“Six days a week; his half-day is Saturday”, she said. “Saturday afternoons then is when I go now; the peace and quiet is wonderful!”

“Then he is about to make a most unfortunate historical discovery!” I grinned.

They both looked at me in surprise.

֍


	2. Chapter 2

Under normal circumstances I would have employed an agent for this task but the fact that the man had struck at someone I regarded as a friend (even if the inspector himself had been in all likelihood unfamiliar with that concept until recently) made me decide to do this myself. The British Museum was doing another of its periodic displays on Ancient Egypt next week and I fully intended to be ready for it.

I decided that I had better be certain of the disguise I had planned, so once I had got myself ready I went to Trafalgar Square. John had told me earlier that he was fortunate enough to have a patient in a road nearby and around lunchtime, so he would certainly be dining at that restaurant on the corner whose pie he did not spend several hours extolling to me every month. Sure enough there he was looking as wonderful as ever, and sure enough there was the pie. Some things in this world did not change, thankfully.

I smiled and went inside to order, not wishing to have to speak in case he recognized my voice. I then came out and sat at the closest table I could; he quirked an annoyed eyebrow at me as there was another empty table further away but I said nothing and looked at my paper.

The waitress brought my order and I caught his eyes light up as he saw the full-sized apple-pie that I had ordered to go. There may have been a small whine in there too before he regained control of himself but he retreated behind his own paper, although I caught him looking around the edges. Twice. There was also most definitely a quivering lip in there too.

Finally he was ready to go and he still stared longingly at the box containing my pie to go. He took a step towards it then sighed and turned away.

“You will be having it tonight anyway.”

He stared at me in shock, clearly trying to process my voice coming from someone who looked nothing like me. I had a padded suit, glasses, a high-quality head of cropped ginger hair (which itched as it was on a head-cover suppressing my own unruly locks) and I had dyed my stubble to match. I was also dressed like a lowly clerk and he took some time before he spoke.

_”Sherlock?”_

I took off my glasses and smiled at him.

“It works”, I said. “I might treat myself to a nice slice of pie to celebrate.”

Now _that_ was most definitely a whine!

֍

It was all in all a busy weekend, for I had not forgotten Bacchus' dealings with the estate of the late Mr. Lee. Also a happy weekend for John when he read (in those social pages that he hardly ever glanced at except on the very rare occasions that he just happened to be passing and the newspaper was open at that particular page) that a certain relative of mine had had to undergo hospital treatment after being severely beaten by a very angry Lord Peter Milborne-Duff. Apparently some horrible person had informed the amateur pugilist that his favourite sister had, despite being married, had an affair with a certain government functionary, so the nobleman had laid my brother out cold in the middle of the Strand. How very unfortunate.

John calling it a 'celebration pie' was, perhaps, pushing things. Then again, perhaps not.

֍

On Monday I went early to the British Museum where I had little trouble finding Mr. Robert Gordon. Miss Bradbury had been right; the sound of his voice was incredibly grating and I could understand why those who were visiting were moving swiftly away from him. I asked if I might have a word and he looked at me as if I was something that the cat had dragged in. I was used to that sort of thing from railway staff and the like – my regular appearance did not always quite march with first-class, I supposed – but I did not have to take it from someone as repulsive as this little worm.

“I am here on a most delicate matter”, I said. “It concerns a rather unusual hieroglyph.”

That clearly both confused him and caught his attention, and I was able to lead him over to where a sarcophagus was dominating the end of the room we were in.

“What is this all about?” he asked testily.

“My name is Mr. Alexander Castle”, I said, “and I have a first-class doctorate in Egyptian Studies from Oxford, Corpus Christi to be exact. I believe that this particular item is dated from the Twenty-Third Century Before Christ?”

He looked at me uncertainly but nodded.

“That is true”, he said, visibly puffing himself up for a speech. “I supervised its positioning here myself. It is a most important piece concerning...”

“I am sorry to interrupt you”, I lied, “but what I have to say is most urgent and it concerns your good self. I have to tell you that the translation of the hieroglyphs on this item is incorrect.”

Mr. Gordon snorted in disbelief.

“Poppycock!” he said rudely.

“I would not be so brazen in your attitude, sir”, I said sharply. “That particular glyph” - I pointed to one with two wavy blue lines above a straight one – “is unique to the Kingdom of Upper Egypt which had re-emerged in the strife of those far-off times. It is not only an invocation towards the next world and the Pharaoh's place in it, but also a curse on any who would disturb that peace.”

He peered uncertainly at the hieroglyph I was indicating. I knew it was indeed unique as I had had an expert break into the Museum at the weekend to effect the change. Not of course on the original artefact where it had been so worn as to be barely visible – I was no vandal - but on the copy below.

“So?” he said, still clearly annoyed at my presence.

“So”, I said as if I was dealing with a particularly stupid schoolboy, “I would then draw your attention to this photograph of the same item being displayed in Egypt _before_ it was brought here. You will notice that the end of the line is solid. Yet now it is crescending. I am sorry to have to tell you that that means the curse has been activated, most likely by someone in this museum.”

I had had the photograph altered as well. He looked at me dubiously.

“Who?” he said. “You cannot seriously think that it is I?”

Because some with an ego your size would be immune to curses, I thought perhaps a shade cattily.

“We shall soon know”, I said confidently. “I am here for a week and this curse is said to work incredibly quickly. Whoever the poor soul is, I most definitely pity them. Their life will soon not be worth living.”

I walked away, thinking that such a thing was quite fitting given what he had done to the poor inspector.

֍

John had been round to check up on Inspector Macdonald again and told me that he was still weak but improving. I had been able to obtain some four weeks off for him and for Constable Smith by demanding their presence for a Most Delicate Case Of Important International Affairs (capital letters always impressed people, I had found) so hopefully all would be well by then. My room-mate did grumble very slightly at his being gulled so easily over the pie, although as he still had the rest of it to finish off, it did not last long. 

The grumbling _or_ the pie!

֍

I was in the Museum the following morning when it opened and not hiding at all in a dark area behind a particularly large exhibit. It took a frantic Mr. Gordon nearly a quarter of an hour to locate me and when he did he was babbling nervously.

“You will not believe it!” he said excitedly. “I went to take a bath last night, turned on the taps and _blood_ came out!”

Actually it had been water with a thickening dye, but I had seen it when I had purchased it and it had looked realistic enough. It had certainly fooled him.

“Blood in the water”, I said thoughtfully. “Like the River Nile in the Bible. You have not damaged that sarcophagus in any way, have you sir?”

“Of course not!” he said hotly. “I would never do such a thing!”

“You see, blood only appears when either the pharaoh or close family are threatened”, I said frowning. “This is _most_ unusual. I shall have to do some more research on the matter.”

“What about me, sir?” he whined. He really was a most unappealing fellow.

“There is little than can be done until I discover more”, I said. “But I would take care throughout today, if I were you. Clearly you have annoyed the Pharaoh in some way and, in Ancient Egypt or Modern Britain, that is _never_ a good thing.”

He shuddered and I left him. I thought wryly that if he was a man of any real ability he would know as I did (all right, as John had told me) that curses were almost unknown in Ancient Egypt. Fortunately he was as stupid as he was mean-spirited.

֍

Wednesday. I barely made it inside the Museum before the fellow was on to me. His face was covered in cuts and scratches.

“I do not know what happened”, he groaned. “Everything was fine until I shaved this morning, then I just started cutting myself.”

“Ah”, I said contentedly. “That is a good sign.”

He glared at me.

“How, sir, is my getting cut every which way a _good_ sign?” he asked testily.

“Because it all but confirms the nature of the curse”, I beamed. “If I am right then the next thing will be a rash.”

He went pale.

“Uh, where?” he managed.

“Let me put it like this”, I said. “I only hope that you sleep alone because I would not like a lady... yes. You know.”

I walked away and left him. _He knew_. And meanwhile my agents were swapping back the abrasive shaving cream they had planted in his house the day before and also doing something rather interesting to his bed.

֍


	3. Chapter 3

Mr. Robert Gordon did not look well this morning. But as I well knew he had had precious little sleep. And from the careful way that he was walking, that powder in his bedsheets had most definitely had an effect.

“This is terrible!” he moaned. “You have to tell me how to stop it!”

“Alas, I cannot.”

He stared at me in horror. I sighed heavily.

“The sequence of events clearly indicates a Curse of Descent”, I said. “What with the way that there were so many people inclined to kill not just the pharaoh at the time but anyone descended from him, they would often place this specific curse to strike such attackers. I have admittedly rarely heard of its lasting for so many centuries except...”

I stopped, seeming lost in thought.

“Except?” he prompted scratching himself in an effort to try to get some relief. A passing lady tutted disapprovingly at his coarseness.

“Pharaoh Ritopec the First whose tomb that came from had a most successful reign” I said, feigning puzzlement. “He repelled an invasion by Lower Egypt and even made some territorial gains in Nubia. He would have had no need to invoke such a curse and his son was almost as... of course!”

I slapped my hand to my head. 

“What is it?” he demanded.

I looked around nervously and pulled him away from some nearby people. I spoke quietly.

“Without wishing to be indelicate”, I said, “the pharaoh's son and successor Ritopec the Second had a vizier, a man called Fures. The two were, as they say in polite circles, 'close'.

I looked at him meaningfully. He (eventually) got it.

“You mean they.... ugh!”

“A different time”, I sighed. “The tomb must have been that of the _son_ , not the father, and the curse designed to protect the lineage of the _vizier_ , not the royal family. There must be a descendant of the vizier somewhere in the city and you have clearly done something bad to them.”

I fixed him with a sharp look. He blushed.

“I have done nothing that I am ashamed of!” he said roundly.

“That is a relief”, I said. “Because unless measures are taken to remedy matters, the fifth stage of the curse is terrible indeed. I only hope you do not have close family, or if you do that you are possessed of copious life insurance.”

For a pasty-faced fellow he could turn an impressive shade of white.

“Wh... what is it?” he asked tremulously.

“If you look closely at the straight line of the glyph”, I said, “you will note that it ends in six small triangles. That means that six agents of justice will be dispatched to track you down. Each will appear in turn and they will not strike until all six have been sent. Then... they do unto you as the Pharaoh did unto the vizier!”

I left him a shivering wreck. Good.

֍

Friday, the last day of the week. It was probably cruel of me to delay my visit to the Museum until early afternoon but it was necessary. And I was able to brief John about it and take him with me which was good.

We arrived at the Museum at just after two o'clock and entered separately as I could not risk my quarry recognizing my friend, although I suspected he would most likely not even notice him. I was barely through the entrance when a blubbering Mr. Gordon was all over me, John standing nearby and barely hiding a grin.

“Mr. Castle!” the excrescence whined. “Save me!”

Behind him two black men emerged from behind an exhibit and stared menacingly at the fellow. A third nearby was very clearly watching him too. To the vile piece of human excrement quivering before me they were three of the six Ancient Egyptian vengeance-bringers, intent on doing something quite unspeakable to him. To me they were a costermonger, a constable and a librarian, and also three of the gentlemen whose release from the Tankerville Club I had obtained some nine years back. Derek had shaved his head for the occasion and, I thought, looked particularly menacing. Although I did hope that that was not eye-shadow I could see or his wife would kill him!

“I cannot”, I said. “Only you can save yourself, sir.”

“How?” he demanded. “I will do anything!”

“I have asked people about you, sir”, I said coldly. “You have an uncle whose lifestyle you disapproved of and whose wealth you coveted. It may be many thousands of miles from the Land of the Pharaohs to Caledonia, but given enough centuries a bloodline can travel far indeed. And you tried to destroy the blood of the Pharaoh's lover.”

“What can I do?” he begged looking anxiously at the two men not far away.

“You must sign over everything you inherited from your common ancestor to your relative”, I said. “Every last penny. Then you must spend a whole night praying to the Pharaoh's Key.”

He looked at me in confusion.

“Today we call them Orion's Belt”, I said in mock exasperation. “You are extremely fortunate that we are in winter, sir, because otherwise they would not be visible from England and you would have to visit the other side of the world to see them.”

“But doing that will ruin me!” he protested.

“The alternative”, I said coldly, “is that those gentlemen following you each do to you what the Pharaoh did to his vizier!” I said pointedly. “In the vernacular of the day, government so often ends up with someone getting shafted. And if you have not set in motion the transfer of funds before sunrise come Sunday – which given that the banks close on the weekend means you will have to find one open in the next hour or so – _then they will surely come for you.”_

Derek had somehow moved across the room without being seen, and suddenly appeared right behind Mr. Gordon. Who promptly fainted. I made a mental note to make sure that he removed that eye-shadow when I paid him outside; I did not want his wife to have that to come home to!

֍

“A fitting end”, I said. The 'tail' Miss Bradbury had placed on the vile Mr, Gordon had just reported back to me that he had effected the transfer of funds as hoped. “He tried to steal the inspector's money and has now lost half his own.”

“He nearly stole his life”, John pointed out.

“He will have the weekend to mull over his failings”, I said. “Derek and some of his friends have arranged a rota to make sure that at least two of them are with the villain on and off for the next few weeks. And they will pop back occasionally after that just to keep him on the straight and narrow.”

John smiled.

“Derek has certainly done well for himself”, he said. “I understand he does some side-work at a modelling studio, posing with a smile and little else.”

“With a body like this, that is understandable” I said casually. 

He looked at me warily. Was that jealousy I saw? Interesting.

֍

I called round on Inspector Macdonald to relate what had happened but found that he was not there. Fortunately a neighbour told me that he had gone to visit a friend in Petersfield Crescent, and knowing that that was the street in which one of my half-brother's molly-houses lay I guessed that Constable Smith had taken him there so went after them. Campbell greeted me and confirmed that the inspector was indeed in one of their back rooms. I raised my eyes when he said that; I knew that that particular room was sound-proofed for the, ahem, clients.

“He wants to move out of that house what will all the memories”, he said. “And when Chas finally persuaded him he did not want their first time to be in the same house.... you understand.”

I could, and I was mightily glad for the lack of details!

“They are well?” I asked.

“They are well all right!” Mr. Buxted my half-brother's lover threw in from where he was writing letters. “They arrived yesterday and we have yet to see either of them. And your inspector friend is _loud_ ; even with the double doors we have had to stop using the rooms nearby with all their screaming.”

Campbell tutted but, I noted, did not gainsay him. I was about to leave but at that very moment Constable Smith entered the room. He staggered over to the couch moaning at every step then fell onto it in an untidy heap with an even deeper groan. 

“He is killing me!” he moaned. “I cannot take any more!”

He was asleep in less than a minute. Campbell had the bad grace to snigger at the poor fellow.

_”Chas?_

The tall figure of Inspector Macdonald loomed at the door. He was impressively muscular; I remember Henriksen once saying that his superior spent many hours in the gymnasium opposite the police station where they both worked as he preferred that to returning to his unhappy home. Now the man was looking at his fellow policeman like a starving dog looking at a juicy steak. Constable Smith woke and immediately looked horrified but dutifully rose to his feet and trudged heavily out of the door, groaning at every step. The inspector followed him and closed the door, but we all still heard a surprised yelp soon afterwards, Campbell shook his head at them.

“Apparently some older men _do_ have the stamina”, he mused. “I wonder if our inspector might be persuaded to spread himself a little further?”

“Only if you want your half-brother here to be investigating _your_ murder!” Mr. Buxted said shortly.

֍


End file.
